Homebrew

The Grimm Brothers collected fairy tales about scoundrels, Rapunzel and the Tailor in Heaven. Those are people that Jacob and William--German boys born in the 1780s--never met, delivering neat little narratives that offer moral lessons outlining life codes meant for mimesis.

Let's get one thing straight: This ain't a fairy tale.

Brothers Grim--four Raleigh boys who like cigarettes, rock 'n' roll music and brown-bottle beer--are after none of that. They write straight from number one, unloading real-life, real-grit narratives scratched out here and now by fellas that have had jaws busted, faces bruised and hearts broken. If that sounds like a formula for a country-western tear-pool, then it's dead on.

"God takes lovers away from each other/ Puts them in a box under lock and key," Adam Lane sings with a thin-lipped anxiety and a barstool disgust in "Don't Wait for Me," a sort of Steve Earle love-hurts song narrated by a vicarious Vietnam tragedy.

Like their kindred spirits in The Drive-By Truckers, Brothers Grim both understands and harnesses the spirit of its native South, especially in the Patterson Hood-dream "Tonight," a revivalist anthem that understands the secret of the Muscle Shoals country-rock recipe was always its defiant soul. And, in large part, they nail it.